At time of writing (Sep 11 2012) Inmagic has not yet released info about DB/Textworks on Windows 8. Fortunately, I am willing to throw myself onto the grenade of a brand new operating system in the name of fun and adventure. So the short story is: you can do it, though I personally am still picking shrapnel out of my tender bits. Here’s what you need to know.

DB/TextWorks (can I just refer to it as “dbext” from here on in? thanks) has a dependency on the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package x86, specifically Microsoft.VC90.MFC version 9.0.21022.8. You will not find that DLL on a new install of Windows 8. Although the install process may go okay, when you attempt to launch dbtext32.exe, you’ll see an error like the following:

And there you have it: a missing assembly. It so happens that the Webpublisher installer ensures this assembly is present, and goes and gets it if necessary. But not the dbtext installer. So one way to fix the problem, as it turns out, is to run the Webpublisher installer on the machine, if you happen to have it available. Or, you can download the redistributable and install it manually. Either way, you can get dbtext up and running on Windows 8. Now follows the short and snappy version.